Cookies Policy

About Cookies …

Directive 2002/58 on Privacy and Electronic Communications, otherwise known as E-Privacy Directive, is an EU directive on data protection and privacy in the digital age. It presents a continuation of earlier efforts, most directly the Data Protection Directive. It deals with the regulation of a number of important issues such as confidentiality of information, treatment of traffic data, spam and cookies. This Directive has been amended by Directive 2009/136, which introduces several changes, especially in what concerns cookies, that are now subject to prior consent.

The Directive provision applicable to cookies is Article 5(3). Recital 25 of the Preamble recognizes the importance and usefulness of cookies for the functioning of modern Internet and directly relates Article 5(3) to them but Recital 24 also warns of the danger that such instruments may present to privacy. The change in the law does not affect all types of cookies; those that are deemed to be “strictly necessary for the delivery of a service requested by the user”, such as for example, cookies that track the content’s of a user’s shopping cart on an online shopping service, are exempted.

The article is technology neutral, not naming any specific technological means which may be used to store data, but applies to any information that a website causes to stored in a user’s browser. This reflects the EU legislator’s desire to leave the regime of the directive open to future technological developments.

The addressees of the obligation are Member States, who must ensure that the use of electronic communications networks to store information in a visitor’s browser is only allowed if the user is provided with “clear and comprehensive information”, in accordance with the Data Protection Directive, about the purposes of the storage of, or access to, that information; and has given his or her consent.

The regime so set-up can be described as opt-in, effectively meaning that the consumer must give his or her consent before cookies or any other form of data is stored in their browser. The UK Regulations allow for consent to be signified by future browser settings, which have yet to be introduced but which must be capable of presenting enough information so that a user can give their informed consent and indicating to a target website that consent has been obtained. Initial consent can be carried over into repeated content requests to a website. The Directive does not give any guidelines as to what may constitute an opt-out, but requires that cookies, other than those “strictly necessary for the delivery of a service requested by the user” are not to be placed without user consent (source: Wikipedia.org).

UK and EU law requires that, where a website uses cookies or equivalent technologies, the website operator must make certain disclosures in relation to the use of the cookies. This Cookie policy has been designed to help “ASR” as website operators comply with this disclosure obligation. Website operators may be required, in addition, to seek users’ consent to the use of cookies. UK law on this subject is contained in Regulation 6 of The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 as amended by The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011.

3.1 A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.

3.2 Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed.

3.3 Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies.

3.4 Cookies can be used by web servers to identify and track users as they navigate different pages on a website and identify users returning to a website.

Our cookies

4.1 We use both session cookies and persistent cookies on our website(s), based on the content management and author system WordPress and its latest version, also see Worpress Codex ( https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Cookies ) .

4.2 The names of the cookies that we use on our website, and the purposes for which they are used, are set out below:

We use cookie names

(a) … to recognise a computer when a user visits our website
(b) … to track users as they navigate the website
(c) … to improve the website’s usability
(d) … to administer the website
(e) … to prevent fraud and improve the security of the website
(f) … to personalise the website for each user
(g) … to target advertisements which may be of particular interest to specific users
(h) … to validate authenticated users sessions
(i) … to facilitate the use of our website search engine
(j) … to identify/score/rank the users in the ASR league system, see: http://www.advancedstudyroom.org/results/ .

Analytics cookies

5.1 We use Google Analytics to analyse the use of our website. <- in preperation and process

5.2 Our analytics service provider generates statistical and other information about website use by means of cookies.

5.3 The analytics cookies used by our website have the following names: n.n. .

5.4 The information generated relating to our website is used to create reports about the use of our website.

We publish Google AdSense advertisements on our website. To determine your interests, Google will track your behaviour on our website and on other websites across the web using the DoubleClick cookie. This behaviour tracking allows Google to tailor the advertisements you see on other websites to reflect your interests (we do not publish interest-based advertisements on this website). You can view, delete or add interest categories associated with your browser by visiting: http://www.google.com/settings/ads/. You can also opt out of the AdSense partner network cookie using those settings or using the NAI’s (Network Advertising Initiative’s) multi-cookie opt-out mechanism at: http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/. However, these opt-out mechanisms themselves use cookies, and if you clear the cookies from your browser your opt-out will not be maintained. To ensure that an opt-out is maintained in respect of a particular browser, you may wish to consider using the Google browser plug-in available at: https://www.google.com/settings/ads/plugin.

6.3 Details of the other third party cookies used by our website are set out below:

(a) in Internet Explorer (version 11) you can block cookies using the cookie handling override settings available by clicking “Tools”, “Internet Options”, “Privacy” and then “Advanced”;

(b) in Firefox (version 44) you can block all cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Options”, “Privacy”, selecting “Use custom settings for history” from the drop-down menu, and unticking “Accept cookies from sites”; and

(c) in Chrome (version 48), you can block all cookies by accessing the “Customise and control” menu, and clicking “Settings”, “Show advanced settings” and “Content settings”, and then selecting “Block sites from setting any data” under the “Cookies” heading.

7.2 Blocking all cookies will have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites.

7.3 If you block cookies, you will not be able to use all the features on our website.

Deleting cookies

8.1 You can delete cookies already stored on your computer; for example:

(b) in Firefox (version 44), you can delete cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Options” and “Privacy”, then selecting “Use custom settings for history” from the drop-down menu, clicking “Show Cookies”, and then clicking “Remove All Cookies”; and

(c) in Chrome (version 48), you can delete all cookies by accessing the “Customise and control” menu, and clicking “Settings”, “Show advanced settings” and “Clear browsing data”, and then selecting “Cookies and other site and plug-in data” before clicking “Clear browsing data”.

8.2 Deleting cookies will have a negative impact on the usability of many websites.